Desert regional medical center program family medicine residency

A UCR School of Medicine residency program, designed to help address a severe shortage of doctors in the Coachella Valley, has graduated its first group of physicians – most of whom are staying to practice locally.

The Family Medicine Residency Program, a partnership between Desert Regional Medical Center, Desert Healthcare District and the University of California, Riverside School of Medicine, welcomed its first class of seven residents three years ago.

Of the seven that graduated June 30, six are staying local.

“Usually, you get to retain maybe one or two graduates in a class,” program director Dr. Gemma Kim said.

The program will now graduate up to eight students annually, all specializing in family medicine.

“Family medicine is a great specialty to have where you have physician needs or deficits because … we get trained in not only adult medicine, but pediatric medicine, geriatric medicine, obstetrics and outpatient surgeries. So, it’s very diverse and allows us to treat all patient populations,” Kim said.

“We treat patients from newborn all the way to geriatrics,” she said.

In addition to the graduating residents, the program has brought 13 faculty members, who are also practicing physicians, to the valley. Another six faculty members will be joining the program this summer, Kim said.

The desert has long struggled with a physician shortage. Young graduating physicians tend to want to locate along the coastline or in large metropolitan areas.

“We have a severe shortage of primary care physicians in the valley and we're struggling with retaining primary care physicians, so part of the thinking was if we partnered, the three of us, and identified students that had ties to the valley, were raised in the valley, know the community, that they would stay,” said Michele Finney, CEO for Desert Care Network which encompasses Tenet Healthcare’s three local hospitals – Desert Regional, JFK Memorial and Hi-Desert Medical Center.

Desert Regional has a deficit of 190 primary care physicians for its service area, Finney said, which includes much of the Coachella Valley and the high desert, including Twentynine Palms – a population of nearly 425,000 people.

“UCR School of Medicine is very unique in that it is one of very few that promotes primary care … and really wants to address the physician disparities that exist in the county and ensure that they meet those needs,” Kim said.

Through the program, a clinic was opened in Palm Springs in 2015, across from Desert Regional, which now serves close to 30,000 patients per year.

The majority are full-time residents coming from Palm Springs and Desert Hot Springs with some also coming from other areas of the valley, Kim said.

“So, we have definitely addressed a lot of the disparities out in this community, especially for primary care,” Kim said.

Five of the June 30 graduates are from Southern California, one is from the Bay Area. Another is from Texas and relocated to the valley for the residency program, bringing his wife – now a registered nurse at Desert Regional – and two children, and they are staying on, Kim said.

Community connection

Dr. Teresa Khoo, a Southern California native from Arcadia, is also staying in the valley.

“I have been very humbled and very blessed by this experience,” said Khoo. “When it came time to choose a residency, I wanted someplace that was committed to the underserved and committed to community outreach, and I found that here.”

Another attraction: community outreach.

“We are very community involved,” Khoo said, pointing to a variety of programs, including a partnership established by Kim between UCR, Palm Springs Unified and Planned Parenthood that sends the residents into the middle schools to teach eighth-graders sex education, including contraceptives and sexually transmitted diseases.

“There is no program of its kind where there is a partnership … with these three entities,” Khoo said. “It’s been a great experience to share that knowledge with the middle school students but it’s also interesting to hear their questions,” she said. “They ask some really good questions.”

A street medicine backpack program provides medical services to the homeless.

Every other Friday for the past two years, residents have been going to Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in Palm Springs when Well in the Desert is serving lunch to the homeless.

“We provide health care to anyone who chooses to come up to our table or we will go around and see if anyone has any health concerns,” she said.

“We’re hoping to get a mobile van that will allow us not only to be at Our Lady of Guadalupe, but to take our project further east or to other community events,” Khoo said.

Kim said there is also an effort to work with Riverside County’s Behavioral Health department to provide mental health care services through the mobile clinic.

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“By going mobile, we’re hoping that not only are we going to get to more areas where we can address more homeless individuals … but also to address those pockets of communities that typically don’t have easy access to health care,” Kim said. “So, senior communities that have difficulties getting to appointments, also to other communities in the valley … that typically have had difficulty with transportation to health care services.”

The mobile clinic would provide care to anyone – with and without insurance, Kim said.

“We hope that through the street med (mobile van) program, it will reduce the number of patients going to the ER whenever they need medication refills or whenever they have an acute complaint,” Khoo said.

The Future Physician Leaders program – started by Rep. Raul Ruiz, a Coachella valley Democrat and also an emergency room physician – is a mentorship program for high school and college students who hope to go into the medical profession.

“Every year we sponsor students to come out to the clinic (in Palm Springs) to shadow the residents and the attending faculty out here to give them a hint of what … it would be like to be a physician or a nurse,” Kim said.

The program is also open to students interested in the administrative end of health care, she said.

“The Coachella Valley participation has really grown over the past few years” with more than 100 students participating, Kim said.

The residency program aligns with the UCR School of Medicine’s mission, which is to address the physician disparity in the Inland Empire by placing residency training programs in areas of need, Kim said.

With the success of the first group, UCR is now working with Desert Regional to expand the program, opening it to more students.

“Studies have proven that residents will either return back to where they grew up or they will continue to stay where they trained … and become part of the faculty as well, as Dr. Khoo has,” Kim said.

“We try to attract students from Southern California, but definitely if there are any from the Inland (Empire) or especially the Coachella Valley, we make note,” she said.